Exhibiting a few frames of my life

A Brief Note on Zubeen Garg

Okay, I’ve told you how I become a fan of Zubeen Garg; but did I really tell you who exactly he is? No doubt he is a household name in Assam and in the recent past he has also become well-known for his songs in Bollywood. But I think I must give a brief account on Zubeen Garg so that if he is new to some people, they can have a fair amount of knowledge about him.

Zubeen Garg is an Assamese who has made it big in Bollywood in the recent past with his hit number “Ya Ali” in the film Gangster. Basically, Zubeen hails from Jorhat, a city located in the Upper Assam region. Though his actual name is Jibon Barthakur, he is known among the masses as Zubeen Garg only. The surname Garg comes from his Gautra name. Apart from singing, Zubeen is a great composer—songs of most of his Assamese albums are composed by himself. He also scores the music of most of his albums as well as Assamese films. He can play the guitar, keyboard, mandolin, dotora, dhol, and various percussion instruments.

Zubeen started his initial music career as a keyboard artist in the early 90s. However, soon he came up with his first album Anamika in 1992, which was an instant hit. This very first album of his rejuvenated the complete music scenario of Assam, in fact the complete northeast. Most of the songs of Anamika were composed by Zubeen himself. Anamika is followed by another blockbuster hit, Maya, and the songs like ‘Dure Dure’ and ‘Maya’ are even counted among the all-time hits of Zubeen Garg. After that Zubeen hardly needed to look back. He released more than 50 albums in Assamese. Soon after he became popular in Assam, he entered the music industry of other regions of India like Bengal, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Hyderbad, Punjab, etc. He has sung more than 8000 songs in different language in India including Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, etc. He has also acted in a couple of Assamese movies like “Tumi Mur Mathu Mur” and “Dinobondhu”. For the music of “Dinobondhu” he also received a national award in 2005.

Although Zubeen was able to establish himself as a renowned singer and composer in Assam in his early days, his journey to Bollywood was not an easy and smooth one. As per my knowledge, he gave his voice for the first time in Bollywood for the song ‘Mere Watan’ of the film “Fiza”. Thereafter he was prominently seen in singing the ‘Jaane kya hoga rama re’ in Sanjay Gupta film “Kaante”. He was involved in a couple of Bollywood projects after “Kaante” but none of them was big enough to hit the limelight. But you know talent never dies and that is what proved, when Zubeen hit the Bollywood with his smash hit number Ya Ali in the film Gangster. After that there is no looking back for Zubeen in Bollywood too. He has sung in numerous Hindi feature films. He also scored the music of one Bollywood venture—Strings—songs of which became quite popular. If you ask me “Which is your favorite Hindi number by Zubeen?” then it is unanimously ‘Jaane kya chahe man’ from the movie “Pyar Ke Side Effects”.